It shouldn’t matter if I’m a stranger straight off the bus from Atlanta, Georgia or a longtime neighborhood fixture - I just want my caffeine buzz without the shot of condescension. Don’t give me that “you don’t look like a regular” or “we make sure to question tourists” jam just because my hairstyles change too much for you to remember me. A barista can’t pick and choose when to give a coffee explainer. (Finally I’m a regular!) We had an engaging conversation, an exchange full of coffee geekdom that skirted around my core issue.Īll the while, inside my head I delivered my own lecture: Sir, I understand beverage styles shift, but customer service is about consistency. The same barista greeted me a little warily and acknowledged he remembered me from last time. So I decided to return to that same indie coffee shop and try again. Maneuvering through 2019 requires sitting in one's feelings and dissecting your issues. So I asked, “You do this thing with everyone who orders a macchiato, or just the people who aren’t your regulars?” Sheepishly, he fumbled his reply, leaving me to wonder, are my feelings valid, or am I being sensitive? May I enjoy my afternoon retreat without the chilly condescension-laced discourse on the difference between Starbucks and “real” coffee? “Especially if you’re not a regular.” Not a regular? I was in there at least once a week. One time, I asked the demure white barista, why the lecture? He looked puzzled, almost if I shouldn’t be asking a question. Every time I sucked my teeth! My anger rushed to the bottom of feet and through the tips of my toes.
COFFEE BUZZ NICOLE HOW TO
My first impulse was to call coffee profiling: They're thinking a Black woman with a southern accent in a fancy place doesn’t know how to order?!? Then it happened a few more times: at a popular, forever-crowded Nolita and SoHo Manhattan neighborhood establishment, at a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn cafe, and at a Instagrammable Adams Morgan area hotel lobby in Washington, DC.
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